Reply #26: I am from East Texas. [View All]

[StellaBlue]

Lived here until age 18 when, mercifully, I escaped (I love some things about this 'Southern' culture, but hate the small-town insularity).

I know ALL ABOUT the Baptists you're talking about. But I have a brain, so I realized very early it was all groupthink hogwash. I don't give them the excuse of 'culturization'. I tend to gravitate to Austin, where 'my people', as my dad calls them, are (he means the ones with purple hair and tattoos, sarcastically). So I think there is something to the idea that it is largely genetic. Or more than we like to think.

I cannot imagine a scenario in which I would have grown up, kept going to church, literally believing it, putting stupid, mass-produced, crappy Christian art on my walls, marrying someone with two first names, and having that smug, smiling aura of the submissive wife. I always KNEW I didn't belong in that. It just was. In fact, thinking about it now in light of this thread, it was much like what it must've been like for my friend who grew up in the same environment realizing she was gay. You just DON'T belong with those people. :shrug: